


Feathers of Yellow

by bluetoast



Series: Birds of a Feather [21]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-20
Updated: 2014-04-20
Packaged: 2018-01-20 02:04:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1492684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluetoast/pseuds/bluetoast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ignacia Madgearu, age eleven and a half, finds that life in Deva, Romania is isolation and routine. She can live with that. Consistency has always been the key in gymnastics.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feathers of Yellow

Living in Deva was like living in isolation. Ignacia had known that when she moved there from Cosoba when she was seven and a half. Not that Cosoba was a thriving metropolis either. She had lived in the city for almost five years and in those five years, she estimated she had grown perhaps seven inches, gained six kilograms in muscle – and had only been home twice. It was hard, but it was necessary.

Romania had a legacy and a reputation to uphold in the world of gymnastics.

The girls who had gone to Barcelona would be coming home soon. Some of the girls would come to Deva, pack their bags and move onward in life. Others would remain and begin again, to prepare for Atlanta in four years. Atlanta would be Ignacia's Games. If she gained proper momentum once becoming a senior elite, she could carry herself all the way to the 2000 Games. And then it would be over.

Years of hard work to culminate in two Olympic Games, six or seven World Championships and every competition she would be welcomed at in between.

The morning exercise was unchanged for decades. After the usual two hundred sit ups, she adjusted herself into the rails on the wall and, toes pointed, feet fused together at the ankle, knees unbending and stiff – two hundred leg lifts. The pain from routine came and went with seasons, times of the month, and assorted injuries.

Ignacia gritted her teeth, keeping her expression stern as she thought of her next competition – a meet for junior elites in Amsterdam in November. Romania would be counting on her. Her left ankle was bound in an ace bandage – she'd sprained it in vault practice two days ago and she was supposed to wear the bandage until the doctors said she could take it off. Which most likely meant September. Coaches understood about things like that.

The infamous incident of what happened to that poor Soviet gymnast, Elena Mukhina was always in the back of many girls – and some coaches – minds. The coaches had taken the cast off of her broken leg too soon and she had ended up paralyzed after a tumbling pass. There were rumors of banning the move that had caused it, the Thomas Salto – because it was deemed too dangerous.

Ignacia had managed to do it a few times – a one and a half backwards somersault in a tucked or piked position with one and a half twists or a one and a half backward somersault in a layout position with one and a half twists. Difficult as hell to execute, even harder to land – and could end your career in a single second.

Shaking her head to clear it, she switched her placement on the wall, so that her legs were tucked under the bars and she had to pull herself up by her waist. Up and straight, up and straight – the only difference between now and when she was a seven year old was the number of times she did it. The idea of doing it two hundred times when she first came to Deva seemed unthinkable – now it was almost second nature.

From there it was time for kips on the bars – her and the other girls her age slowly moving around one of the uneven bars – the taller girls on the high, shorter on the lower, moving in almost perfect synchronization, like cogs in a clock. The urge to move fast, to swing and flip was always strong. Kips made Ignacia dream of being able to fly. Some day, she'd swing off that higher bar, turn over several times in the air and slam into the ground, feet planted, legs locked and arms over her head in a salute. She could do that now – but she wanted something more.

As running time came and her feet came to the floor, Ignacia found it easier to think as they jog-ran around the gym. Neither a hard run or a full on sprint, it was almost like the games of early childhood on the playground. Run, reach a certain spot, do a spin and continue onward. Many girls had lofty dreams – they wanted an Olympic Gold Medal in every event, consecutive World Championship titles, and things that made Ignacia dizzy thinking about.

Last year, on her eleventh birthday, she decided that what she wanted was two team medals, at least one of them gold – an all around medal of any color, and a few event medals – and a gymnastic move named after her.

Run and leap, spin and land without so much as a waver. As she jogged past the mens-only apparatus – the rings and the parallel bars, she could see in her mind's eye, sitting at some future Olympic Games, the ones in 2008 or 2012 with other great gymnasts – of course Nadia would be there – and she would watch little girls perform the Madgearu – she wasn't certain what she wanted it to be yet – and feel a sense of extreme pride.

For now, however, it was all routine and repetition. The coaches wanted consistency and Ignacia was willing to bet they'd make sure all the girls had blisters in the exact same places on their hands if they could.

The run came to an end at the floor, where all the girls would stretch out and coaches would state the routine for the rest of the morning. As Ignacia lowered her upper body to the floor, arms over her head, the faint sound of music, most likely Mozart, drifted over the girls. She smiled and felt a little of the tension in her back give. Music was a variable.

Music and the daily fruits and vegetables – these things changed daily.

Everything else was routine and unchanging.

Routine kept Romania's gymnasts strong – and it helped them get through the years under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu and now that he was gone, routine continued to bring pride to the country that was still struggling to find its feet as communism faded into history.

Gymnastics was one of Romania's constants. It was her and her fellow gymnasts' duty to keep that constant.

The princesses of gymnastics.


End file.
